venerdì 23 marzo 2018

Scientists call on the World Health Organization International Agency for Research on Cancer to re-evaluate the carcinogenicity of cell phone radiation after the Ramazzini Institute and US government studies report finding the same unusual cancers.

Listen to March 22 Teleconference with Fiorella Belpoggi, PhD, Director of the Ramazzini Institute Research Department ;Lennart Hardell, MD, PhD Department of Oncology, University Hospital, Örebro, Sweden;Ron Melnick, PhD Retired toxicologist with the National Institutes of Health and lead the design of the National Toxicology Program Study; David O. Carpenter, MD Director of the Institute for Health and the Environment, Co-editor of the Bioinitiative Report; Devra Davis, MPH, PhD, Visiting Professor of Medicine at The Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem, Israel: Annie J. Sasco DSc, MD, PhD Retired Director of Research at the INSERM (French NIH) and former Unit Chief at International Agency for the Research on Cancer World Health Organization, France at this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3337&v=N9LLfFxJTVg

(Washington, DC) – Researchers with the renowned Ramazzini Institute (RI) in Italy announce that a large-scale lifetime study of lab animals exposed to environmental levels of cell tower radiation developed cancer. A $25 million study of much higher levels of cell phone radiofrequency (RF) radiation, from the US National Toxicology Program (NTP), has also reported finding the same unusual cancer called Schwannoma of the heart in male rats treated at the highest dose. In addition, the RI study of cell tower radiation also found increases in malignant brain (glial) tumors in female rats and precancerous conditions including Schwann cells hyperplasia in both male and female rats.

“Our findings of cancerous tumors in rats exposed to environmental levels of RF are consistent with and reinforce the results of the US NTP studies on cell phone radiation, as both reported increases in the same types of tumors of the brain and heart in Sprague-Dawley rats. Together, these studies provide sufficient evidence to call for the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) to re-evaluate and re-classify their conclusions regarding the carcinogenic potential of RFR in humans,” said Fiorella Belpoggi PhD, study author and RI Director of Research.

The Ramazzini study exposed 2448 Sprague-Dawley rats from prenatal life until their natural death to “environmental” cell tower radiation for 19 hours per day (1.8 GHz GSM radiofrequency radiation (RFR) of 5, 25 and 50 V/m). RI exposures mimicked base station emissions like those from cell tower antennas, and exposure levels were far less than those used in the NTP studies of cell phone radiation.

“All of the exposures used in the Ramazzini study were below the US FCC limits. These are permissible exposures according the FCC. In other words, a person can legally be exposed to this level of radiation. Yet cancers occurred in these animals at these legally permitted levels. The Ramazzini findings are consistent with the NTP study demonstrating these effects are a reproducible finding,” explained Ronald Melnick PhD, formerly the Senior NIH toxicologist who led the design of the NTP study on cell phone radiation now a Senior Science Advisor to Environmental Health Trust (EHT). “Governments need to strengthen regulations to protect the public from these harmful non-thermal exposures.”

“This important article from one of the most acclaimed institutions of its kind in the world provides a major new addition to the technical literature indicating strong reasons for concern about electromagnetic radiation from base stations or cell towers,” stated Editor in Chief of Environmental Research Jose Domingo PhD, Professor of Toxicology, School of Medicine at Reus University, Catalonia, Spain.

“The US NTP results combined now with the Ramazzini study, reinforce human studies from our team and others providing clear evidence that RF radiation causes acoustic neuroma (vestibular schwannoma) and gliomas, and should be classified carcinogenic to humans,” stated Lennart Hardell MD, PhD, physician-epidemiologist with the Department of Oncology, University Hospital, Örebro, Sweden, who has published extensively on environmental causes of cancer including Agent Orange, pesticides and cell phone radiofrequency radiation.

“The evidence indicating wireless is carcinogenic has increased and can no longer be ignored,” stated University of Toronto Dalla Lana School of Public Health Professor Emeritus Anthony B. Miller MD, Member of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of Canada and the UK, and Senior Medical Advisor to EHT who is also a long-term advisor to the World Health Organization.

“This study raises concerns that simply living close to a cell tower will pose threats to human health. Governments need to take measures to reduce exposures from cell tower emissions. Cell towers should not be near schools, hospitals or people's homes. Public health agencies need to educate the public on how to reduce exposure from all sources of wireless radiofrequency radiation—be it from cell towers or cell phones or Wi-Fi in schools,” stated David O. Carpenter MD, former Dean of the School of Public Health at the University at Albany. “This is particularly urgent because of current plans to place small 5G cell towers about every 300 meters in every street across the country. These 5G ‘small cell’ antennas will result in continuous exposure to everyone living nearby and everyone walking down the street. The increased exposures will increase risk of cancer and other diseases such as electro-hypersensitivity.”

Ramazzini Institute investigators have completed nearly 500 cancer bioassays on more than 200 compounds, and their study design is unique in that animals are allowed to live until their natural deaths in order to allow detection of late-developing tumors. Eighty percent of all human cancers are late-developing, occurring in humans after 60 years of age. This longer observation period has allowed the RI to detect such later-occurring tumors for a number of chemicals, and their published research includes studies of benzene, xylenes, mancozeb, formaldehyde and vinyl chloride.

The Ramazzini research results come in the wake of similar findings from the US National Toxicology Program (NTP) large-scale experimental studies on cell phone radiation. Both studies found statistically significant increases in the development of the same type of very rare and highly malignant tumor in the heart of male rats—schwannomas.

“This publication is a serious cause for concern,” stated Annie J. Sasco MD, DrPH, SM, MPH, retired Director of Research at the INSERM (French NIH) and former Unit Chief at the International Agency for Research on Cancer/World Health Organization, France, who commented that, “some of the results are not statistically significant due to the relatively small number of animals involved. Yet, that does not mean they should be ignored. Larger studies could turn out statistically significant results and in any event statistical significance is just one aspect of evaluation of the relation between exposure and disease. Biological significance and concordance of results between humans and animals clearly reinforces the strength of the evidence of carcinogenicity. The facts that both experimental studies found the same types of rare tumors, which also have pertinence to the human clinical picture, is striking.”

“Such findings of effects at very low levels are not unexpected,” stated Devra Davis PhD, MPH, president of EHT, pointing to a Jacobs University replication animal study published in 2015 that also found very low levels of RFR promoted tumor growth. “This study confirms an ever growing literature and provides a wake-up call to governments to enact protective policy to limit exposures to the public and to the private sector to make safe radiation-free technology available.”

In January 2017 at an international conference co-sponsored by Environmental Health Trust and the Israel Institute for Advanced Study at Hebrew University, Fiorella Belpoggi PhD, Director of Research at the Ramazzini Institute, presented the study design and the findings that RFR-exposed animals had significantly lower litter weights. Belpoggi’s presentation and slides are available online. The Ramazzini findings of lower litter weights are consistent with the NTP study, which also found lower litter weights in prenatally exposed animals. At that time, the Italian journal Corriere published an article about the presentation of the Ramazzini study and quoted Belpoggi’s recommendation of “maximum precaution for children and pregnant women.”

Noting that “current standards were not set to protect children, pregnant women, and the growing numbers of infants and toddlers for whom devices have become playthings,” Davis, who is also Visiting Professor of Medicine of Hebrew University Medical Center and Guest Editor in Chief of the journal Environmental Research, added, “Current two-decade old FCC limits were set when the average call was six minutes and costly cell phones were used by very few. These important, new, game-changing studies show that animals develop the same types of unusual cancers that are being seen in those few human epidemiological studies that have been done. In light of these results, Environmental Health Trust joins with public health experts from the states of California, Connecticut and Maryland, as well as those in France, Israel and Belgium to call on government and the private sector to carry out major ongoing public health educational campaigns to promote safer phone and personal device technology, to require and expedite fundamental changes in hardware and software to reduce exposures to RFR/microwave radiation throughout indoor and outdoor environments, and to institute major monitoring, training and research programs to identify solutions, future problems and prevention of related hazards and risks.”

“More than a dozen countries recommend reducing radiofrequency radiation exposure to children. Countries such as China, Italy, India and Russia have far more stringent cell tower radiation regulations in place when compared to the United States FCC. This study provides scientific evidence that governments can use to take even further action to protect the public,” stated Theodora Scarato, Executive Director of EHT.

The malignant schwannomas of the heart seen in the Italian study are the same as those described by the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) earlier this month as the basis for their concern that cell phone radiation, both GSM and CDMA, can lead to cancer. Ramazzini embarked on its RF project in 2005, about the same time as the NTP effort was taking off.

A paper detailing the Ramazzini experiment is expected to be published in Environmental Research, a peer-reviewed journal, within a week.

“It is a positive study and will buttress the findings from the NTP rat study,” Tony Miller told Microwave News. Miller, an emeritus professor of epidemiology at the University of Toronto, is serving as the guest editor for a special issue of the journal, which will include the Ramazzini paper. Miller declined to offer any other details prior to publication.

Fiorella Belpoggi, the Ramazzini Institute’s director of research, presented preliminary results of the study last fall. Speaking at the annual symposium of the Collegium Ramazzini, known as “Ramazzini Days,” in late October, Belpoggi reported finding schwannomas in the heart of male rats exposed to GSM cell phone radiation, according to a number of those who were at the meeting. (The abstract of Belpoggi’s paper is available here.)

This is “more than a coincidence,” was a typical response from close observers of cell phone toxicology studies who had heard or were told of the new results. No one wanted to speak for attribution until they had a chance to read the new Ramazzini paper. “It’s amazing given that malignant schwannoma of the heart is a super rare cancer,” said one of those interviewed.

In an e-mail exchange, Belpoggi confirmed that her paper would be available online within days. She would not comment further.

A total of 2,448 rats were exposed to 1.8 GHz GSM radiation for their entire lifetime in the Ramazzini study. The radiation used in the Ramazzini study was designed to mimic that transmitted by a cell phone base station. The rats were exposed to 5, 25, or 50 V/m for 19 hours per day from before birth until spontaneous death. Equivalent SARs are not provided in the abstract. As the rats grew larger, the SARs will have decreased. (The NTP exposures were at 900 MHz and were limited to two years.)

Schwann Cells at the Center of Attention

Schwann cells play a key role in the functioning of the peripheral nervous system. They make the myelin sheath, which insulates nerve fibers and helps speed the conduction of electrical impulses. There are Schwann cells just about everywhere there are peripheral nerve fibers. They are present in most organs of the body —whether mice, rats or humans. Schwann cell tumors are called schwannomas.

The NTP found schwannomas in many other organs, in addition to the heart, of rats chronically exposed to cell phone radiation. These included a variety of glands (pituitary, salivary and thymus), the trigeminal nerve and the eye. The NTP notes that the combined incidence of schwannoma in all organs was “generally higher” in the GSM-exposed male rats, but it was not “significantly different” from the unexposed controls. Still, the rate doubled at 3 W/Kg, the mid-exposure level, and was even higher at 6 W/Kg (Table A-2).

The NTP also saw schwannomas in the uterus, ovary and vagina of female rats.

“There are lots of nerve fibers wrapped in Schwann cells,” David Carpenter told us by e-mail. “We are learning that if the exposure is focused at one place, like the head, the schwannomas occur in the auditory nerve, whereas if it is a whole-body exposure they occur elsewhere, such as in the heart.” Carpenter, a medical doctor who trained as a neurophysiologist, is the director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University of Albany in upstate New York.

“It is also striking that other tumors occurred in organs such as the prostate, pancreas, thyroid and liver in the NTP study,” Carpenter added, “These observations suggest a much greater number of sensitive organs than we have previously documented in humans to date.”

Schwann Cells Are a Type of Glial Cell

The brain has no Schwann cells —the brain is part of the central nervous system. There, glial cells play a similar function. In fact, Schwann cells are a type of glial cell. Here’s part of what the NTP wrote in its report on the RF–exposed rats:

“Schwann cells are similar to glial cells in the brain in that they are specialized supportive cells whose functions include maintaining homeostasis, forming myelin and providing support and protection for neurons of the peripheral nervous system.”

Tumors of the glial cells are called gliomas. The NTP also saw an increase in glioma among the male rats exposed to GSM and CDMA radiation.

Higher rates of glioma have been reported in a number of epidemiological studies of cell phone users. The other tumor linked to cell phone radiation in human studies is acoustic neuroma, a tumor of the auditory nerve. This is a type of schwannoma, formally called a vestibular schwannoma.

While schwannomas and gliomas are commonly non-cancerous tumors, they can develop into malignant schwannomas or glioblastomas (they are malignant too). Both of these can spread and are thus true cancers.

Suddenly, it seems, a more coherent picture of the human and animal RF–cancer data is emerging with tumors of Schwann and glial cells at its center. The implication is that instead of searching for consistency in RF’s ability to cause cancer in specific organs, the emphasis should now be on specific cell types —beginning with Schwann cells in the periphery and glial cells in the brain.

Power Line EMFs Also Linked to Schwannomas of the Heart

Interestingly, an earlier Ramazzini study looking at the combined action of a single dose of gamma radiation (ionizing radiation) and lifetime exposure to power-frequency (50 Hz) EMFs led to a statistically significant excess of malignant schwannoma of the heart among male rats —even at an exposure of only 20 μT (200 mG). Those results were published in the International Journal of Radiation Biology in 2016 and have not drawn widespread attention.

In that paper, the Ramazzini researchers commented that malignant schwannoma of the heart is “a rare tumor in rodents, as it is in humans.” They noted:

“Heart malignant schwannoma is not a frequent tumor among male Sprague-Dawley rats from our colony. Out of 2415 males, the overall incidence of heart malignant schwannomas is 0.7% (range 0–2%).”

Like Ramazzini, the NTP used Sprague-Dawley rats for its RF exposure studies.

Is It Time for IARC To Re-Evaluate RF Radiation?

In her talk last October, Belpoggi said that the NTP findings alone should lead the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) to re-evaluate its 2011 designation of RF radiation as a “possible” human cancer risk —perhaps upgrading it to “probable.” Belpoggi went on that if the Ramazzini study were to confirm the NTP findings, such a re-evaluation would become urgent.

Ramazzini now appears to have at least partially replicated the NTP results.

Historically, there have long been strong ties between the NTP and the Ramazzini Institute, leading a number of those interviewed to believe that the NTP might well have been aware of the Belpoggi's new findings for some time. John Bucher, the leader of the NTP RF–animal project, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The special issue of Environmental Research with the Ramazzini paper is devoted to presentations from a forum on Wireless Radiation and Human Health held in Israel in January 2017. Belpoggi spoke there and then again, nine months later, at the Ramazzini Days symposium. The Israeli meeting was organized by the Environmental Health Trust.

Mobile phones emit electromagnetic radiations that are classified as possibly carcinogenic to humans. Evidence for increased risk for brain tumours accumulated in parallel by epidemiologic investigations remains controversial. This paper aims to investigate whether methodological quality of studies and source of funding can explain the variation in results. PubMed and Cochrane CENTRAL searches were conducted from 1966 to December 2016, which was supplemented with relevant articles identified in the references. Twenty-two case control studies were included for systematic review. Meta-analysis of 14 case-control studies showed practically no increase in risk of brain tumour [OR 1.03 (95% CI 0.92-1.14)]. However, for mobile phone use of 10 years or longer (or >1640 h), the overall result of the meta-analysis showed a significant 1.33 times increase in risk. The summary estimate of government funded as well as phone industry funded studies showed 1.07 times increase in odds which was not significant, while mixed funded studies did not show any increase in risk of brain tumour. Metaregression analysis indicated that the association was significantly associated with methodological study quality (p < 0.019, 95% CI 0.009-0.09). Relationship between source of funding and log OR for each study was not statistically significant (p < 0.32, 95% CI 0.036-0.010). We found evidence linking mobile phone use and risk of brain tumours especially in long-term users (≥10 years). Studies with higher quality showed a trend towards high risk of brain tumour, while lower quality showed a trend towards lower risk/protection.